Comparing Early Harness Sulkies
From Heavy Highwheelers to Light Bicycle Wheels, the Sulky Evolved
Truss axles and crossbars holding heavy wooden wheels higher than the driver's seat gave way to "bike" wheeled, speedy, low-slung sulkies for harness racing.
In the beginning, man created a heavy sulky, and it was not good. Man rode alone. Was he sulky?
Too Much Awkward Weight
Broad tires and high, heavy wooden wheels comprised the first harness racing sulkies. A straight iron axle connected the wheels, and a spring supported flat board with a crossbar out front to brace his feet accommodated the seated driver.
Although not as comfortable as a wagon, this early version of the sulky was more versatile than a wagon. It could more swiftly carry doctors and officials across rough territorial dirt roads and bumpy fields.
The high wheel style was a nightmare on a race track, though, and its weight, as much as one hundred pounds, was detrimental to the sulky horse's trotting speed. Horse racing is, and has been, mostly about speed. The fastest time recorded on the track with the Standardbred pulling a high wheeler was Sunol's 2:081/4 mile in 1891, a world championship effort once achieved.
The top of the wheels on the early sulky reached above the thighs of the driver, exposing him to large amounts of flying debris and dirt.
The "Bike" Begins
The "bike" sulky significantly changed harness racing. Its smallish bicycle wheels were tucked inside and below the seat rigging, allowing the driver to be more on top of things, so to speak. High wheelers, like the Caffrey and the Toomey axle, created an increased danger of entanglement on the course, as spokes, wheel rims, felloes, and the spoke's central interconnections could touch those of the sulkies to the right and left coming around track turns.
The harness sulky needed to be streamlined, just like today's car, to maximize speed, and to reduce the danger on the harness racing track. The bike sulky accomplished this. When the renown trotter Maud S. pulled a thirty-eight pound bike sulky across the finish line in record time in 1885, the push for the bike slowly began to take shape.
As with all new ideas that bring radical change, acceptance of the new bike took some time.
Geers and Doble Popularize The "Bike"
Budd Doble and Edward F. "Pop" Geers, popular drivers in the 19th Century, tried out the new hand crafted low wheel sulkies coming out of the Massachusetts hickory bicycle factory owned by Sterling Elliot. Geers took the harness racer Excellence to the track in early morning of July 20, 1892. In several heats, Excellence first drew a high wheeler around the track, then the new low wheel bike rig, and again the high wheeler. The result was a faster time by as much as two seconds with the low bicycle wheels.
A racing crowd eventually cheered later that afternoon when Geers and Doble both drove such as Honest George and Nancy Hanks, respectively, to impressive times against high wheelers. Weeks later, Doble and Nancy Hanks hit a new world record with the bicycle wheels, admirably saving ground on the turns.
Evolution took it from there. The "bike" was constantly improved over the following years, with more and more pounds dropping off the load. Today's harness racers pull just thirty-eight to forty pounds of sulky.
